Marikana strikers did not disrupt police plan,
Bizos argues
Thousands
of striking miners, armed, angry and determined, massed at Marikana in August
last year in defiance of the police who opened fire using live rounds. Picture:
THE TIMES
VETERAN
human rights lawyer George Bizos SC on Tuesday told national police
commissioner Riah Phiyega that the crowd that assembled at Lonmin’s Marikana
platinum mine on August 16 last year did not disrupt a plan by police to disarm
and disperse them.
Instead,
he told Gen Phiyega, the police disrupted the crowd
"The
experts will say an excessive show of force is disruptive to peaceful
crowds," Adv Bizos said during the hearings of the Marikana commission of
inquiry, which is probing the deaths of 34 men who were on strike at the mine.
Gen
Phiyega has defended the police action to disperse the crowd assembled at a
koppie near the Nkaneng informal settlement on August 16, which left 34 people
dead and more than 70 injured. She said there had been a plan in place to
disperse the crowd, but the plan was disrupted.
Adv Bizos
asked about her reliance on the statement that the "crowd disrupted the
plan".
"What
did the crowd do before the use of force to disrupt the plan?" he asked.
Gen
Phiyega replied that the type of disruption she mentioned would best be
explained by police commanders who had implemented the plan on August 16.
"They
would talk about when it was disrupted for the first time and when it was
disrupted for the second time," the police chief said.
Adv Bizos
said another crowd management expert would say acts such as the use of force
and cordoning off a crowd with razor wire could be considered highly
provocative.
He also
asked whether the use of water cannon, without any warning or explanation,
could be seen as provocative. Gen Phiyega replied that if the police plan had
not been disrupted, that decision would have been made.
Adv Bizos
asked whether the use of tear gas and stun grenades without warning the mostly
unarmed crowd could not be viewed as provocative. Gen Phiyega said it was not
provocative.
"I
am going to put to you that the blank denials on whether these were provocative
acts would be contradicted by experts on the management of crowds," Adv
Bizos said.
The
commission continues.
